


easy

by acrobaticblood



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, POV First Person, They're exes, angsty angst, harry's an emotional wreck, harry's letter to draco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrobaticblood/pseuds/acrobaticblood
Summary: Since they broke up, Harry's been writing letters to Draco. This one he might just send.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 24
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> loosely inspired by troye sivan's song easy :)

Sunday

October 17, 2005

Dear Draco,

I can’t sleep in ~~our~~ my bed anymore.

In fact, I haven’t been able to step into the bedroom at all since. I bet the tulips you brought in that morning are all wilted, the petals fallen and dried out into brown on the floor.

I sleep on the couch instead. It’s reminiscent of that one time before. Do you remember? We were drunk and you wouldn’t let me kiss you, I kept missing your mouth. You said I called you by the wrong name, but I was just calling you _darling_. You locked yourself in the bedroom and I fell asleep on the couch waiting for you. The truth is I didn’t mind. At the time the thought of you existing on the other side of the threshold was enough for me. At dawn, you were already a warm and heavy-limbed ivy around me, with your stubborn arms and your hot breath in my neck. You couldn’t even make it through the night. You never stayed mad for long. I know that now.

Maybe you’ve gotten yourself locked behind ~~our~~ my bedroom doors again. Maybe you’re changing the plant water, opening windows in the morning and pulling the blinds at night. Maybe the key’s fallen under the mattress and you just can’t seem to get it out and unlock the door just yet. Maybe you need a bit more time.

That’s what I tell myself when falling asleep becomes a chore ( ~~but so does staying awake, the one productive thing I’m good at is missing you~~ ), the white noise of the telly a summoning lullaby and I’m perpetually stuck between fluttering eyelids and pacing around the house.

At dawn, when my body violently jerks me out of sleep and I open my eyes – there’s no breathing in the crook of my neck nor warm skin under my fingers. Again.

I don’t drink black coffee anymore, because I don’t know how to make it. ~~I never liked it before you and you never told me your tricks~~. I tried the other day and got so furious at myself when it turned out shit that I cried over the sink for half an hour, all the spilt coffee residue smiling wickedly at me like it’s happy to be going down the drain. Like I did it some sick favor. I don’t really know how to deal with anger lately. I guess I never did. My coping mechanisms have changed though. Now, if it angers me I cry about it. For example, the other day at work I went through a whole year worth of files, selecting and organizing them in chronological order (you would’ve loved it) and then Robards stepped by to tell me I’m going to have to do it all over again for some reason I didn’t stay around to hear, for my eyes were already wet so I had to excuse myself. I cried at the second floor toilets, under a weak Silencing Charm that kept wavering over my nasty sobs. I organized the files again after that, of course. Wasn’t even that loathsome, once the anger was out.

Ron says I should socialize more.

I guess he’s right. I don’t really talk to people anymore. I don’t have anything to say to them. Last Tuesday I complimented Neville on his new robes, but that hardly counts as social interaction.

When I look in the mirror nowadays it takes me longer and longer to recognize myself. I clutch the cold marble of the sink until my knuckles turn as white as it, but the person staring back at me is frighteningly unfamiliar no matter how many times I blink. I keep asking Hermione _is there something strange about my appearance lately_? She never says yes and I never believe her.

When people talk to me, I spiral out, get kidnapped and taken away by my own cloudy thoughts. Yesterday Ron went off about Chudley Cannons for half an hour and all I could think about were your _knees_ , Draco. I’m fucked up. I swear I can smell you in some parts of the house, in the habitual misty crack of side-alonging someone to the Ministry, in stranger’s cologne and my own toothpaste. I still haven’t thrown your toothbrush out for fuck’s sake. I keep telling myself I ought to do it, but I’m afraid I like the comforting look of it a bit too much for such an act of abandonment.

And then on some nights, when I’ve chain smoked my life away and my throat aches like it did back when you’d let me stay between your thighs until the morning – I think of you.

I touch myself and think about you saying _Harry_ and then _God_ like you couldn’t tell the difference. Like it was the same to you. If it was a lie, it was a damn believable one. You, repeating my name like that, calling out God’s name – that was the holiest I ever felt.

And then I come, Draco, with my eyes shut tightly, because if they weren’t I’d start to cry and feel even more pathetic than I already do.

On Friday you told me he makes it easy. He kissed your neck in the elevator and I wanted to burn it down. Get us all fried and smoky. Him. You. Me. The loneliness in my belly.

You said he makes it easy but, darling, I can’t _breathe_ without you. You get stuck in my throat like a traitorous confession, sticky resin on my sinful tongue, dripping down my jaw and onto my sockless feet – you taught me how to be. I’m sorry it was never easy for us. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it easy for you. I loved you too much.

I’ve been writing a lot of letters to you lately, but never sending any of them. I don’t know what has changed, what makes this one different, but I think I’ll send it.

Yours, Harry


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco's response letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a couple of people wanted me to write a response and i had some ideas so i made them work and here it is! hope you enjoy <3

Dear Harry,

I’m sorry to hear about your recent sleeping inconveniences. No matter how much I wish I weren’t sharing the same sentiment right now (and I do wish upon it very hard, trust me) – I am. I’m writing this out on the balcony, while Blaise is asleep in the bedroom. It would be a lie if I said I couldn’t smell the tobacco we’d smoke out here together right now. I don’t smoke anymore. It was a habit we shared, much like all the other addictions I got hooked on while with you. It doesn’t feel good doing those things on my own. It doesn’t bring comfort or satisfaction, just a painful sort of nostalgia. It’s same with the tulips. I don’t buy does anymore either.

Blaise is good to me. I understand this might not be what you want to hear right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true – he does make it easy. He’s easy to care for, he makes me breakfast (and doesn’t burn it), he kisses my forehead and mother loves him. He does all the things you did, except he doesn’t adore me as much. I don’t blame him though. I don’t think anyone’s ever adored me the way you did, Harry. And I’m also not sure that’s a compliment.

I’ve never been anyone’s favorite person ~~except yo~~ and no matter how good Blaise is, how many _neck kisses_ he gives me, I still walk around with my head in the clouds most of the time now. And it’s not the good, cotton-candy pink kind either. It’s the gloomy, inflated with impending rain one.

I overwork myself to stay sane, go out for drinks with Pansy and reread the same murder mystery over and over again. It’s the comfort of knowing the plot by hand, of having already psychoanalyzed the character’s actions. I know who’s about to die, I know who pulls the trigger or sharpens the knife, who ends up weeping over the coffin – I just have to read it through.

I sometimes think of us as characters in one of Agatha Christie’s novels. Who’d be the cold-blooded, robbed-of-all-empathy murderer and who the naïve reckless victim?

You’re too kind-hearted, Harry, you’d never do it, and I, as we’ve come to unravel once again, am weak and a coward.

You’re not naïve, love, you don’t fall under the hands of homicide, you seek them out and cradle them, and I am not reckless – I choose my tormentors carefully and learn them all the tricks.

It’s clear that we don’t fall under those categories, so who are we? Who am I when I buy purple grapes in October because they’re your favorite, Harry? No one eats them. They ripen and rot on my table until they’re nothing but a home to a family of fruit flies and poor Blaise has to throw them out because I can’t fucking look at them without falling apart and he can’t figure out why. Who am I when I wake up in agony, seeing nothing but crimson flames and he has to hold me while I mouth _your_ name? Who am I when he fucks me and all I can think about are your hands?

Some things we just can’t speak about.

That’s not how our murder mystery ends, love. We don’t get to perform a massacre and walk out of the burning building like we did when we were kids. We are the unreliable narrator of this storybook, we built this slaughterhouse on our own shed skin and hollow bones.

We don’t get to turn a blind eye on this one. 

I think I finally understand your concerns on owling me the letter in the first place. I’m not used to being honest this loudly. I do however think, I owe this to you. At least this. After the way I left.

I won’t be writing you anymore and I suggest you take my advice and teach yourself how to start hating me again. Lord knows it’s what we do best.

Love, Draco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spare some kudos and comments pls

**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoed that!  
> should i do draco's response letter?


End file.
